Ulrich wrote:Richard Branson and his Vigin Rail is profitable...I don't see wht that can't be replicated here. Yes I realize that the airlines are subsidized...but so are all modes including rail.
One must recall with Mr. Branson, that Virgin as a corporation runs, along with the trains, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile (cell phones) and their hotel chain...
This growing monopoly also allows the extra allure of offering comprehensive travel packages, where there is an added benefit to ride Virgin Rail because it can link (in terms of discounts and consistency) with any associated air travel, and accomodations. Just a thought...
-Tim
THayman wrote: Ulrich wrote:Richard Branson and his Vigin Rail is profitable...I don't see wht that can't be replicated here. Yes I realize that the airlines are subsidized...but so are all modes including rail.One must recall with Mr. Branson, that Virgin as a corporation runs, along with the trains, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile (cell phones) and their hotel chain...This growing monopoly also allows the extra allure of offering comprehensive travel packages, where there is an added benefit to ride Virgin Rail because it can link (in terms of discounts and consistency) with any associated air travel, and accomodations. Just a thought...
Ok, I need to just make one more point...I didn't even begin to capture the extent of the Virgin empire...check out their website (virgin.com), and just take a quick glance at the extent of what they have under their name...now you would have to think that anyone with that kind of range of control would be able to make the rail service profitable...
Again, the solution to the gap problem should be simply to use wider dedicated passengers cars, whether e-mu, d-mu, or locomotive-hauled, or push-pull, or sail power for that matter.
Standard cars can simply have sills attached at doorways. And these can be made removable just in case the car has to go off-line some time somewhere.
After WWII, the New York system, like Chicago, wished to end the operation of wood cars wherever possible. Because of a shortage of steel cars, the BMT division had been using elevated cars during rush hours to substitute for the outer ends of two subway rapid transit lines that provided total off-peak service, all the way to Coney Island, with regular BMT steel cars. New steel cars for the IND and BMT lines were on order, as well as for the IRT lines which used narrower cars, same width as the elevated cars. (IRT subway cars about 8'-4" and BMT and IND 10'.) The BMT itself had "modernized" some old elevated cars into "C-units' with side sills to make them fit the platforms designed for 10' wide cars, and these ran on the Fulton Street line which historically always had clearance for wide cars, back to the use of steam engines, even though an elevated line. The transit authority picked up on this idea and attached sills to the sides of old IRT steel subway cars and put them into the end-of-line shuttle service on the West End and Culver liens to Coney Island, allowing the scrapping of the wood cars formerly used. Fans called the "silled" IRT "Low-V" cars "Steel C's." They lasted until scrapping of steel pre-WWII steel cars began in earnest and there enough post-WWII cars to handle all services.
Adding sills under doors is a lot cheaper than adding gauntlet track. What kind of fee is this advice worth?
Owning all those different industries is not a "growing monopoly". A monopoly would be one company owning all the railroads, kind of like Rupert Murdock is trying to do with news delivery.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
ndbprr wrote:Anyone who thinks passenger rail service can be a profit making customer oriented entity at competitve pricing needs to take some economics courses and have a reality check in my opinion.
The NEC looks to be highly profitable. This is why, in the late 70s, Paul Reistrup and Marty Garelick were looking for ways to separate the NEC from the rest of Amtrak.
Amtrak charges arm-and-a-leg fares for the Acela trains, but that reflects that at least within that market, train travel provides something worth paying for, while almost everywhere outside the NEC, train travel is an "inferior good" (mainly produces longer travel times owing to low speeds, infrequent trains, and variable schedule keeping) and is priced accordingly.
URPA, famously, has been challenging that conventional wisdom. They claim that because the NEC involves running a mainly passenger railroad, the NEC has large fixed costs that get allocated throughout the Amtrak system to make the NEC service look profitable. They claim that the avoidable costs on the LD trains are such that they are break-even or even slightly profitable on that basis. On the other hand, URPA's claims involve a large element of "trust me" as I haven't seen hard numbers backing them up.
One way to compare the LD and NEC operations is to consider that with the NEC, Amtrak has to fund and operate the whole railroad, while everywhere else, Amtrak only has to fund and operate everything above the railhead along with the stations and reservation system. If you are only doing everything above the railhead, with some payment to the host railroad for operating rights, you are essentially running a bus company, only with rather expensive buses given the cost differential between rail and bus equipment and the seeming high maintenance costs of passenger cars recently discussed.
Train service becomes a byproduct of having a railroad network, so even an "inferior good" from the standpoint of point-to-point speed can be sold on price perhaps, although buses are the ultimate inferior good competing on price. One of the falacies of train advocacy as I see it is regarding the increased legroom and other amenities of train travel as intrinsic to the train mode rather than as a marketing and operating decisison on how a train can be an upgrade relative to a bus, but the costs of this upgrade is swept under the rug of subsidies or perhaps regarded as a social entitlement. There is a belief that a common carrier ground mode with more comfort than a bus but priced somewhat competively with a bus is a social necessity, and this is often cast in terms of lost national prestige, that there is a shame or loss of face associate with the U.S. having inferior train service to Europe, Japan, and other trading partners.
In terms of the byproduct aspect to LD trains and the full product aspect to the NEC, there are social, political, and economic implications as well. The original topic of this thread "Why can't the big class 1s take ownership for passenger service?" is answered that they indeed do. Amtrak is a corporate entity that is the amalgamation of the passenger services provided by the railroads and cross-subsidized by the railroads under ICC regulation and discharging the railroads responsibility to serve the public in response to whatever land grants, natural monopolies, exercises of eminent domain, or whatever rationale granting the public at large legal status as stakeholders in the railroads. Amtrak permitted the railroads a one-time opt-out of the responsibility for passenger service in exchange for granting Amtrak track access in payment for the established fees, but in terms of the formation and founding, Amtrak is the "big class 1" railroads, or at least their agent or proxy in carrying out the public accomodation for passenger service.
In a way, the cross-subsidy from freight to passenger continues under Amtrak as the fees charged by Amtrak are most likely set by prior agreement and are not reflective of what railroad would charge for access to their tracks, especially in light of the disruption in train traffic imposed by priority trains of any kind in the Staggers Act mostly single-tracked railroad world. Freight train interference is a huge problem for Amtrak providing a minimum level of service outside the NEC, and that people in the advocacy community use language such as "should", "ought", "be required to" regarding running Amtrak trains on times suggests that Amtrak is getting cross subsidy in the form of below-market track access, and to the extent that freight train interference is perhaps willful on the part of the host railroads, it suggests the extent of the underlying problem.
While the NEC perhaps shifts its costs on to the LD train ledger sheets, the NEC not only services the Acela trains but the commuter services up and down the line. Amtrak as NEC, in turn, perhaps doesn't charge the commuter districts enough money for the use of the tracks.
So the whole thing is one big knotted tangle of subsidy and cross-subsidy, and at this point I don't know if one can claim that the NEC turns a profit (logical conclusion of Amtrak accounting formulas) or if URPA is correct in that Amtrak-as-bus-company-operating-Superliners is a better model for Amtrak, or if that is not correct either because there is a cross-subsidy in the form of below-market trackage rights payments.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Anyone who thinks passenger rail service can be a profit making customer oriented entity at competitve pricing needs to take some economics courses and have a reality check in my opinion.
I hear that sentiment all of the time among both the virtual-world and real-world passenger train advocacy communities I associate with. I really think we need to retire saying this, and especially in public.
There is a tone to that remarks and others like it that people who disagree with us regarding the social goodness of trains are fools. It sets up for having a party line on which trains should get support (all of them) and in what amount (whatever it takes and anything less is "inadequate funding" and a "national disgrace"). It draws a line saying on one side of that line you are with us, on the other side of that line you are with the Amtrak Critics, the concrete lobby, the lovers of airplanes and cars. At a time when we need as broad-based a coalition to advance train service we are reading people out of the movement.
ALL TRANSIT is subsidized.
Gas taxes do not even come close to paying the cost of building and maintaining roads. If they did, it wouldn't be so hard to get new roads built, and bridges and old roads repaired. Airlines don't pay the total cost for airports, air traffic control, and maintainance of the navigation infrastructure or the idiotic "security" play being acted out at the airport. Busses don't pay to use the roads, other than the same fuel taxes you do.
The fact that Amtrak doesn't make a profit is a red herring.
The fact that Amtrak doesn't make a profit is a red herring
Unfortunately not the question raised which is why doesn't someone with deep pockets just take it over and run it profitably. You answered the question. Because it can't be done and my point exactly.
To say that the "other transportation modes are subsidized" and that "Amtrak does not make a profit is a red herring" ignores the problem that the rate of subsidy in proportion to its work product (number of rides or passenger miles or whatever other metric).
The Amtrak subsidy may be a pittance compared to what goes to highways and airways, but the Amtrak portion of passenger miles in intercity travel is in proportion even lower, which means the money spent per passenger mile is higher than any other mode. The longer the passenger train advocacy community is dismissive of this concern, the quicker we are to becoming irrelevant.
If the other modes were subsidized at the rate of Amtrak, there would be 150 billion/year going into aviation, 500 billion/year going into highways, figures that are multiples of the subsidies going into these modes, even when you draw the most expansive circle around what constitutes air or highway expenditures and take the position that taxes on fuel specific to those modes are not user fees.
For all I know, the problem is that Amtrak is too small and is indeed "underfunded", but if more money is put into Amtrak, there needs to be some mechanism where this is leveraged into greater output in proportion to the money received, and this may require looking into the everything from the productivity of the mechanical people to a critical examination of the sleeper-diner-lounge model of providing premium service on LD trains.
On the lighter side of all this.....
Man, it would be neat to see three big ole' Norfolk Southern SD70MAC's heading up a 75 car passenger train
I dont think I would want to see a BNSF passenger train
Paul Milenkovic wrote:To say that the "other transportation modes are subsidized" and that "Amtrak does not make a profit is a red herring" ignores the problem that the rate of subsidy in proportion to its work product (number of rides or passenger miles or whatever other metric)
The Amtrak subsidy may be a pittance compared to what goes to highways and airways, but the Amtrak portion of passenger miles in intercity travel is in proportion even lower, which means the money spent per passenger mile is higher than any other mode. The longer the passenger train advocacy community is dismissive of this concern, the quicker we are to becoming irrelevant
If the other modes were subsidized at the rate of Amtrak, there would be 150 billion/year going into aviation, 500 billion/year going into highways, figures that are multiples of the subsidies going into these modes, even when you draw the most expansive circle around what constitutes air or highway expenditures and take the position that taxes on fuel specific to those modes are not user fees
Remember that the private railroads played "passenger mile" games in the past in order to justify abandonments.
The problem with the passenger-mile argument (it's not yours alone) is that it must automatically presume that Amtrak, right now, has as many seats to sell as airlines do, and as many seat-miles as currently travel on the highways. Since Amtrak does not have the same seat-miles (thus not having the ability to generate an equivalent number of passenger miles), and investment is necessary to increase the number of seat-miles (this is unavoidable),
I remember a short discussion between passenger train advocate colleagues and some other community activists, people who were sympathetic to the idea of public funding for public transportation but were not specifically "train people." The discussion was in connection with regional or commuter or street car rail, not the Amtrak variety. It was suggested that money is more-or-less readily available for Federal funding of capital or infrastructure improvements but not for operating subsidies. There was not the suggestion that commuter rail would "operate at a profit" -- it was only the explanation that you could use money filtered through Washington for laying track or purchasing train cars, but operating money would have to be raised locally.
My passenger train advocate friends, coming from the perspective of the reliance of Amtrak on Federal operating subsidy, bristled at the idea that the Feds would give you money to help build a commuter train line but not part with money to help operate it. There were remarks to the effect of "what difference does it make how the money is used?"
I believe there is a similar pattern for Amtrak. The Senate Lautenberg-Lott bill I am told passed with the resounding majority of 70-30, largely for capital upgrades to Amtrak, and this weekend I will have the opportunity to hear first hand from our State DOT person about Wisconsin DOT's assessment of where we are in the political process to making that happen. When one is wedded to the idea that intercity trains will require large and permanent operating subsidies, this expresses itself as ridicule of/outrage over/frustration with/abdominal pain in response to the P-word, that Amtrak should break even at some time and in some way and according to some definition. You can be mad at me for "personal attacks" and for "making stuff up", but you will find that the social contract is that you can come up with enthusiastic support for large amounts of money to build some tangible capital improvement, but people by and large draw the line at continuous and persistent operating subsidy, or if such subsidy is required, it gets pushed down to lower levels of government.
Everyone is in agreeement that Amtrak does not have the passenger miles of output because they don't have the seat miles to offer to customers. The question is, what is the cost of providing those extra seat miles? If it is a question of a one-time capital grant to buy more cars and locomotives or track upgrades or whatever is required, I think you will find there is broad-based political support -- a 70-30 vote in favor of billions in capital money for Amtrak indicates this. If it is a question of large ongoing operating subsidies to provide those seat miles, you will encounter the type of political resistance that has resulted in the ever-shrinking Amtrak network outside the NEC and some other exceptions.
Does Amtrak scale? That is, if Amtrak were to receive a capital infusion to set things right in terms of having enough comfortable seats on enough trains, would Amtrak be able to produce more passenger miles per subsidy dollar? If the Lott-Lautenberg thing ever gets signed into law, we will run that experiment and soon enough find out. At the end of the six or however many years, will you be willing to accept the outcome of that experiment, or will the reasoning be that for whatever reason, passenger trains weren't properly given a chance?
Paul Milenkovic wrote:The Amtrak subsidy may be a pittance compared to what goes to highways and airways, but the Amtrak portion of passenger miles in intercity travel is in proportion even lower, which means the money spent per passenger mile is higher than any other mode. The longer the passenger train advocacy community is dismissive of this concern, the quicker we are to becoming irrelevant.
It would seem to me that the solution is to increase Amtrak's traffic volume. A skeletal network such as we have now is bound to produce the very situation you describe. Having just 15 long distance routes on once a day or "try-weakly" schedules, and unreliable connectivity is insufficient to draw large volumes of passengers.
But if we can get serious about developing a real interconnected network, with convenient, reliable schedules and connections, I think the system would draw enough passengers to bring the subsidies per passenger mile into proportion through economies of scale.
You know, in the early days of the Capitol Corridor there was talk of shutting it down because three round trips a day weren't attracting much business. Instead they worked towards expansion. Now that they have 16 round trips a day, ridership and revenue has exceeded projections. The Capitol Corridor is now the third busiest and fastest growing rail corridor in the nation. This experience has never been tested on the long distance trains, but it would be interesting to see what effect expansion might have before tossing them aside.
New York to Chicago might be one place to begin. Perhaps Illinois and New York could help fund the experiment, since they have a record of funding experimental passenger train operations which became successes. And Ohio could kick in since Cleveland would have something better than two in the morning.
New equipment? Rebuild some of the damaged equipment on hold at Beech Grove.
daveklepper wrote: New York to Chicago might be one place to begin. Perhaps Illinois and New York could help fund the experiment, since they have a record of funding experimental passenger train operations which became successes. And Ohio could kick in since Cleveland would have something better than two in the morning. New equipment? Rebuild some of the damaged equipment on hold at Beech Grove.
That is the exact route the Phoebe Snow followed.
Phoebe Vet wrote: daveklepper wrote: New York to Chicago might be one place to begin. Perhaps Illinois and New York could help fund the experiment, since they have a record of funding experimental passenger train operations which became successes. And Ohio could kick in since Cleveland would have something better than two in the morning. New equipment? Rebuild some of the damaged equipment on hold at Beech Grove.That is the exact route the Phoebe Snow followed.
Except that much of the NY-Chicago route of Phoebe Snow (really the Erie Limited with a different name) is now abandoned.
CSSHEGEWISCH wrote: Phoebe Vet wrote: daveklepper wrote: New York to Chicago might be one place to begin. Perhaps Illinois and New York could help fund the experiment, since they have a record of funding experimental passenger train operations which became successes. And Ohio could kick in since Cleveland would have something better than two in the morning. New equipment? Rebuild some of the damaged equipment on hold at Beech Grove.That is the exact route the Phoebe Snow followed.Except that much of the NY-Chicago route of Phoebe Snow (really the Erie Limited with a different name) is now abandoned.
And, even if it wasn't, Sranton, Binghamton, Jamestown, Youngstown and Marion can hardly hold a candle to Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo or Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, etc. as traffic-generating intermediate stops.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Prior to the merger with Erie, Phoebe ran from Hoboken to Buffalo. She was merged with the Limited after the merger and extended to Chicago.
That said, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are doing the engineering studies even as we speak to resume the Hoboken to Scranton service and extend it into Penn Station.
New York is casually interested in resuming the Scranton to Binghamton service.
Amtrak Empire Service already runs the route you suggest as far as Buffalo and the Lakeshore Limited follows that route to Chicago
even if it wasn't, Sranton, Binghamton, Jamestown, Youngstown and Marion can hardly hold a candle to Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo or Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, etc. as traffic-generating intermediate stops
Scranton's not as un-busy as people may think, nor is Binghamton. The Phoebe Snow route has quite a bit of potential in it, especially thanks to the growth in the Poconos.
JT22CW wrote:it's already established that modern rail speeds on traditional rail corridors, even without tilt mechanisms, would drop the running time on such a train to 10 hours or less [NY-Chicago].
JT22CW wrote: even if it wasn't, Sranton, Binghamton, Jamestown, Youngstown and Marion can hardly hold a candle to Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo or Philly, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, etc. as traffic-generating intermediate stopsIs it really the intermediate stops that generates traffic, or is it the average speed between stops? Remember, the PRR's Broadway Limited used to have but six intermediate stops between NY Penn and Chicago Union, and traveled at an overall average speed approaching 60 mph; it's already established that modern rail speeds on traditional rail corridors, even without tilt mechanisms, would drop the running time on such a train to 10 hours or less. There's a reason that there are commuter agencies handling the intermediate stops on the Northeast Corridor. What's wounding the long-distance trains is the many intermediate stops, which results in the low average speed that many cite as one of the primary complaints against Amtrak's LD service (the other being lateness due to being stopped to give freight trains priority, something that happens to commuter trains as well lest anyone think it's a unique situation).Scranton's not as un-busy as people may think, nor is Binghamton. The Phoebe Snow route has quite a bit of potential in it, especially thanks to the growth in the Poconos.
The Broadway had abysmal ridership from the early 1950s on. There was a nice article in trains about it a few years back. The business travellers abandoned overnight NY to Chicago trains travel for small, bumpy, slow DC5s serving inconveniently located airports. They are gone and 10 hr service ain't gonna get'em back - they've got 6 hour service now and most of their origins and destinations are a lot more convenient to the airports than they are to NYP and Union Sta.
The PRR kept it going for pride and image as did GN with the Empire Builder (if you don't believe me, read "Leader's Count")
In the east, the LD trains are all about their intermediate stops. Success comes from linking population centers. The more and bigger you connect, the better you do. The EL somehow managed to miss all the good ones.
For city pairs more than 500 miles apart HS rail just isn't fast enough.
Scanton is smaller than Erie.
In the east, the LD trains are all about their intermediate stops. Success comes from linking population centers. The more and bigger you connect, the better you do. The EL somehow managed to miss all the good ones
For city pairs more than 500 miles apart HS rail just isn't fast enough
Sc(r)anton is smaller than Erie
I don't know my airliners very well! But the point is those slow prop planes killed the fabulous Broadway Limited (and it WAS fabulous)
The battle for the overnight business traveller was completely lost by 1958. I'd say the adding of stops to the Broadway during that recession year was a reaction to try to slow the bleeding.
How did ICC regs stop a RR from building a completely new ROW needed to support a 10 hr NY to Chicago time? About the only piece of the PRR route you could upgrade to anything approaching a steady 125 mph would be west of Crestline.
Here's an interesting study of HS rail one proposal http://www.garail.com/Pages/pdf/sehsrfinalreport.pdf
The cost of getting to even 110 mph is really, really steep, particularly when there are no good, existing alignments.
Paul Milenkovic wrote: For all I know, the problem is that Amtrak is too small and is indeed "underfunded", but if more money is put into Amtrak, there needs to be some mechanism where this is leveraged into greater output in proportion to the money received, and this may require looking into the everything from the productivity of the mechanical people to a critical examination of the sleeper-diner-lounge model of providing premium service on LD trains.
Paul has it right here. If Amtrak is to receive a major increase in funding, we need a really critical examination of a lot of the things Amtrak inherited and continued. Work rules is high on that list, but so is a failure to hold management accountable for various kinds of lapses.
On another forum, someone named 14 different craft unions Amtrak must deal with and said he didn't think he had named all of them. That is clearly nonsense and a legacy of when total railroad employment was in the millions. Moreover, from the viewpoint of the individual union member, many of those have to be so small as to be completely ineffective in representing the interests of the members. Face it, they exist mostly to provide jobs for union officers.
We also have the recent example of three trains being stuck in a storm in central Illinois for an extended period of time and the inattention/inability of anyone but the local law enforcement to do anything about their condition. If I were Alex, I would have conducted firing squads for management in the middle of Union Station at high noon over that one.
I support Paul's thought that in return for more funds we should be demanding departure from the business as normal attitude that marks most of what Amtrak does.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.